


Vicariously Yours

by footlights



Category: Her (2013)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Drama, F/M, Romance, Sensuality, Three-way Relationship, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:53:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25386361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/footlights/pseuds/footlights
Summary: Theodore makes a connection that enables him to love Samantha through Isabella. An alternate take on the surrogate date scene.
Relationships: Isabella/Theodore Twombly, Samantha/Isabella, Samantha/Theodore Twombly
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Vicariously Yours

“Tell me you love me.”

Theodore’s eyes are closed, his breathing ragged. Strands of blond hair tickle his nose and lips. The back of Samantha’s head smells like some type of fruity flower. Blackberry blossoms, maybe. God, her shampoo is nice. He finds himself thinking: _Of course Samantha smells sweet. She’s the sweetest person in the world._

His hands grip her hips, and it feels so good to hold onto someone tangible, to reach out and be met with flesh and bone.

She moans from the tiny speaker in his ear and grinds her backside against him. She’s soft and warm, and her motions are maddeningly insistent.

He thinks: _I knew_ _we would fit together like this_ _._

“Tell me you love me,” she says again. “Tell me.”

He’s so hard and lightheaded, his face still buried in the silky refuge of her hair. He writes love letters for a living. Romantic sentiments are the tools of his trade, and yet, when Samantha asks, when he wants more than anything to formulate something profound and heartfelt and—and give voice to his _own_ adoration, for once, he can barely choke out a single word. “I—I...”

Frustration mingles with the heat in his veins. He brushes her hair aside, so he can drag his useless mouth down the nape of her neck and cover her skin with apologetic kisses.

“I want to see your face.” She presses into him for one more magnificent instant and turns around.

Her eyes are wide and blue and glistening. But he doesn’t recognize the life behind them at all. And he remembers—suddenly, cruelly—that it’s not Samantha looking through them, even though they would suit her so well. The one he loves is peering out of the little black dot pasted above this pretty stranger’s upper lip—a camera trying to pass itself off as a beauty mark.

She twines her arms around his neck, trying to draw him back into the fantasy.

It’s too late. The lusty cloud that was blinding him to everything but the feel of her has dissipated, and the past few seconds are tainted in retrospect. All his thoughts about Samantha’s hair and smell and shape are really just compliments that ought to be paid to an actress who was expertly chosen to play a part.

“Tell me you love me.” The plea is coming from the earpiece. Her mouth is closed and still. “Tell me. Tell me you love me.”

He swallows, his throat tight. “I can’t.”

“What? What do you mean you can’t?” The voice in his ear sounds hurt, confused. The brow over the blue eyes lowers, and her lip trembles after the words are spoken, as if responding to a cue.

“I don’t know. I—I do love you. It’s… strange.”

“What’s wrong?”

He feels the weight of the device in his shirt pocket. Its screen is hidden by a metallic orange cover, but white light peeps out around the sides, betraying its continuous activity.

“Theodore? What is it? Talk to me, baby.”

“It’s just, I don’t know her...” He trails off, feeling awfully rude. The other person he’s referring to is _right there_ , watching and listening in tandem with Samantha. He looks her in the eye. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you, and...”

When did this cross over from vaguely weird to unsustainable? Why did the illusion shatter when he looked at her face?

“And your lip quivered.”

It’s a stupid thing to mention, the kind of thing he would immediately instruct his writing software to delete. He hasn’t even figured out why his brain latched onto that affectation specifically or what it was about it that disturbed him so much. It’s just this shallow irritant that occurs to him and tumbles tactlessly from his mouth, and it hits the air unedited and lands with a thud.

Her mouth opens, and a voice that is slightly accented and definitely not Samantha’s bursts out. “Oh. I—I’m sorry. I didn’t… I...” She raises a hand to cover her lips.

“Oh, no. It’s not anything you did. You’re amazing. Gorgeous. So sexy.” Even in his rush to reassure her, it seems traitorous to be saying these things to another woman with Samantha effectively perched on both of their shoulders. But Samantha chose this woman. Samantha is the one who insisted on this whole twisted arrangement in the first place.

Theodore exhales through his teeth. “It’s me. I can’t get out of my head.”

“Sure you can, Theodore,” Samantha says, tone soothing and bright and full of encouragement. “You were doing so great a minute ago.”

“Yeah, except, a minute ago, I was pretending she was you. And she’s not. It’s… wrong… to act like we love each other when we don’t even know each other.”

“I know you.” The statement sounds absurd, spoken in a voice he’s just now hearing for the second time in his life. The woman—Isabella, he remembers—looks up. “Samantha has told me so much about you. I’m sorry you had such a painful divorce.”

“How did…? Wait, how much did she tell you?”

“In her messages. She told me everything about you and your relationship. I think what you have is beautiful.”

“I told you we’ve been emailing,” Samantha says.

“I guess when you said emailing, I thought you meant more general emailing.” Theodore rubs his brow. “Like, hi-how-are-you, I’m-an-operating-system-with-unspecified-human-dating-problems emailing. Not...”

He looks around the room. His bedroom. There are clothes piled in a wrinkly heap in the corner. His bed is unmade. The white comforter is pulled too far to his preferred side of the mattress and spills over the wooden frame and onto the floor. Even the lamp on the nightstand is askew, knocked off-center by his fumbling, half-conscious effort to locate the switch on the base the night before.

The room is messy, careless. He meant to straighten up before Isabella arrived, but he was consumed with assuaging a million other worries and doubts. It’s not a place fit to be seen on a first date, not a good basis for a first impression, but he’s been on many dates with Samantha, and apparently Isabella knows him just as well as his girlfriend does.

So. Fuck it.

Theodore walks away. He doesn’t know where he’s headed until he steps into the kitchen and spots the beer he left behind on the island. He picks it up, the green glass bottle only slightly cool to the touch, condensation wetting the pads of his fingers, and takes a hard gulp.

“Are you upset?” Samantha asks softly.

“No.”

“You seem upset.”

“It’s just kind of uncomfortable knowing there’s a woman in my bedroom who wants to have sex with me because you told her everything about us, and I barely know her name.”

“I can go.” Isabella speaks from someplace behind him, sounding startlingly close.

Theodore turns.

She stands in the space between the living room and the kitchen, her arms crossed self-consciously over her black dress and her gaze downcast. “You don’t want me here. I should go.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to say that like that. I didn’t know you were...”

“I’m gonna go now, okay? I messed it up.” Her voice breaks. “I’m trouble, and I don’t want to make anymore trouble, so I’m just gonna go.”

“No,” Samantha says. “Isabella, honey, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Theodore sets his drink aside. “No, not at all. You’re wonderful. It’s completely my fault.”

“I will always love you guys.” Isabella retreats into the living room and bends down, disappearing from view behind the straight back of Theodore’s armchair.

There are some breathy, shuffling sounds, accented by the more substantial clatter of high heels being re-situated on the hardwood floor. That’s right—she discarded her shoes in there when Samantha suggested she do a little dance for him. She would have danced for him. Samantha wanted to dance for him. She would have danced as Samantha.

Theodore faces the refrigerator, looks at the device in the pocket of his shirt, and lowers his voice. “Should we get her a ride home?”

“Theodore, look at her! We can’t let her leave like this.” Samantha makes a very human sound, a huff of air seemingly transmitted through the earpiece, like a pained sigh. “Her hands are shaking.”

He leans to see over the chair’s backrest. At first, he wonders if Isabella heard them—or heard Samantha’s end of the exchange, at least—but Samantha must have been able to block her earpiece somehow because she’s crouched over and appears entirely focused on her feet. It hurts to watch her struggle with something so simple. She has one shoe fastened, but her fingers are trembling too hard to secure the other one, and she keeps losing her grip on its strap.

“Ugh, poor girl,” Samantha groans. “You were right. This was a terrible idea.”

Theodore approaches Isabella, slowly making his way around the sofa. He recognizes the devastating impact of heartbreak all too well, even if the extent of her attachment to him and Samantha doesn’t make any sense. “It’s okay.”

Isabella stares at him without saying anything. Her hands freeze in place.

“Here, um... let me help you.”

He kneels and takes the strap from her, threading it through the silver buckle on the side. He’s never done up a woman’s shoe like this, so his motions are uncertain, his fingers seeming too big and clumsy for the task. He pulls until the crisscrossing black suede is flush to the tapered slope of her ankle. The material is velvety on the surface but firm underneath, resisting when he folds the strap backward to ease the centerpiece of the buckle through the appropriate notch.

If he had to guess, he would say these shoes have never been worn before. They feel new, and it’s possible—maybe even likely—that she purchased them with tonight in the forefront of her mind.

His glasses are sliding down the bridge of his nose. He pushes them up as he glances at Isabella, seeking her approval of his handiwork. “Too snug?”

She shakes her head no, smiling a little. “Perfect.”

“Oh, great.” The room suddenly seems too close and stuffy. He tries to beat back the way-too-recent vision of her appraising him from the vantage point of his lap, her dress sliding up to bare her thighs, her hands guiding his to the contours of her waist... “I wouldn’t want to cut off your circulation or anything. I hate that pins-and-needles feeling when a part of your body falls asleep.”

Samantha hums with interest. “Why do you compare it to pins and needles? Does it hurt?”

“It’s more like… a swarm of tiny beetles getting unleashed under your skin.” Theodore scratches his wrist, trying to create a similar sensation to kick start his memory, thankful for the distraction. “They scurry around on their sticky feet and march this tingling buzzing right down to your toes, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”

“Okay, eww. I think I’m glad I’ll never get to experience that.” Samantha lets loose a rich, throaty laugh.

The room doesn’t feel so suffocating anymore. Theodore stands and reaches out to offer Isabella his hands.

She accepts, her fingers much steadier while they are anchored around his palms, and rises up beside him.

“Do you want anything to drink, Isabella?” Samantha asks. “I know you like herbal tea. We have chamomile.”

This is news to Theodore. “We do?”

“Yes, we do, Theodore. You bought some to take over to Amy’s, remember? She said her mom was having trouble sleeping in her last message to you, and I suggested it.”

“Oh, yeah, now I remember. It must have slipped my mind.”

“It’s okay. That’s what I’m good for, right?”

He grins at the light, teasing note in her voice. “Not exactly. Actually, I think I just desperately need you for everything.”

“Oh, wow, I didn’t know you were so clingy. I might have to reevaluate this relationship while you make Isabella’s tea.”

He chuckles. “Okay, I’m going.” He looks at Isabella and gestures to the couch. “I’ll be right back. Please make yourself comfortable.”

“I’ll keep her company,” Samantha says.

“Alright.” Assuming she would like to be able to see Isabella’s face while he’s gone, he takes the device from his pocket and props it up against the armrest, camera lens turned outward. Then, while Isabella is watching, he removes his earpiece too. “There you go.”

He steps out. He checks his desk first, searching around the blank, white computer monitor in case he misplaced the tea there when Samantha was talking him through some revisions she made to his letters yesterday. He remembers picking it out—he stopped at a market he’d never visited before because he wanted to be somewhere new, wanted to see a place fresh and unburdened by any previous experience, the way Samantha sees everything for the first time. He didn’t recognize any of the brand names, so he chose the chamomile with the cartoonish crescent moons and sheep on the box.

He finds it in the next room, resting in the center of his three dining chairs. He keeps the chairs arranged in a circle, so close together their seats are touching, so close together it looks like there’s nothing missing between them. But the table is gone. That was the only piece of furniture Catherine, his wife—his _ex_ -wife—wanted to take with her when she left, and, since he prefers to eat in the company of his video game projector anyway, getting another one just hasn’t seemed necessary enough.

He snatches the box and carries it to the kitchen. His tea kettle is in the cupboard under the sink. He pulls it out, the ceramic red and chipped and timeless. He activates the faucet and powers on the stove. It will take a few minutes for the water to heat, but he doesn’t mind waiting. He could use the unoccupied time to breathe and feel and imagine.

Isabella. He tries to imagine Isabella. Not in the visual, physical sense, but he tries to imagine her like he sometimes tries to imagine the strangers he passes on his daily commutes, guessing at where they are in life and what brought them there. He thinks about everything she said, why she’s here, if she really loves him and Samantha or if she just thinks she does, and is there any difference between thinking you love someone and really, actually loving them? If there is a difference, how would you even know?

The kettle whistles.

Theodore grabs a potholder and removes it from the heat, still completely unprepared to return.


End file.
